Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a press conference with Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (not pictured) in front of the presidential palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 6, 2023. Ritzau Scanpix/Ida Marie Odgaard via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights
Sept 8 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that his country’s allies had eased sanctions on Russia and called for a renewed drive to impose further punitive measures on Moscow.
“At this time, we see too long a pause by our partners in terms of sanctions,” he said in his nightly video address. “And very active Russian attempts to evade sanctions.”
Zelenskiy said keeping the pressure on Moscow should focus on Russia’s energy sector, its access to microelectronics and its financial sector.
“There are three priorities: further sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, real restrictions on the supplies going to the terrorists of chips and microelectronics in general and continued blocking of Russia’s financial sector,” he said.
“The world’s sanctions offensive must resume.”
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko had earlier said Ukraine rejected any suggestion of easing sanctions against Russia as part of efforts to restore the U.N.-backed agreement to ship grain through the Black Sea.
“Easing part of the sanctions regime against Russia in exchange for the resumption of the grain agreement would be a victory for Russian food blackmail and an invitation to Moscow for new waves of blackmail,” Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.
Reporting by Oleksander Kozhukhar and Ron Popeski; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
By Andrew Osborn
LONDON (Reuters) -Azerbaijan is ready to allow Red Cross aid from Armenia into the ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh enclave if Red Crescent aid from Azerbaijan is let in at the same time, Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, told Reuters.
Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but run by ethnic Armenian authorities, is at the centre of a rancorous stand-off, with Azerbaijan restricting movement along the only road to it from Armenia to thwart what it says is arms smuggling.
Armenia says what it calls a blockade of the “Lachin corridor”, known as “the road of life” by ethnic Armenians in Karabakh, has caused acute shortages of food, medicines and other essentials.
Baku says it has let the Red Cross evacuate people to Armenia for medical treatment and that its own information shows there is no shortage of basic food staples, but it has not allowed food and other supplies in for some time.
Hajiyev said in an interview on Thursday that Azerbaijan was now ready to let the Red Cross bring in humanitarian aid on condition that the Red Crescent also be allowed to bring in aid, on a different road from Azerbaijan.
He said the two roads – the Lachin corridor and the Aghdam road – could be opened to aid simultaneously as part of a pilot scheme that could defuse tensions and spur long-running peace talks between Baku and Yerevan.
The idea had been discussed in a phone call between President Aliyev and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sept. 1, he said.
“There was a suggestion for the simultaneous opening of the roads and Azerbaijan agreed and immediately agreed,” said Hajiyev, saying that part of the Aghdam road had been obstructed with concrete blocks by Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian authorities.
“Now one week has passed since the telephone call with Secretary Blinken and there is no movement.”
Yuri Kim, acting assistant secretary of state for the United States, spoke on Thursday of “progress toward immediately & simultaneously opening Lachin and other routes to get humanitarian supplies into Nagorno-Karabakh”.
“Opening routes and direct talks are key to resolving outstanding issues,” Kim said on X.
Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire banker who was a top official in Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian administration until February, said Azerbaijan was wrong to try to attach preconditions to allowing aid to pass through the Lachin corridor.
Vardanyan, who has accused Baku of trying to “ethnically cleanse” the enclave by choking off supplies to it – something it denies – said a Russian-brokered 2020 ceasefire deal signed by Azerbaijan after a short war was meant to ensure that the Lachin corridor remained open to Armenia.
“Their President signed a trilateral ceasefire statement on November 9th (2020) and took responsibility for providing a corridor for uninterrupted connection,” Vardanyan said on X on Wednesday.
“However, they now refuse to implement that commitment and are attempting to impose new preconditions for opening the Lachin Corridor.”
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
A glass door bears a commemorative seal marking 75 years at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, U.S., July 8, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
MOSCOW, Sept 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which is trying to recruit more Russians as spies, has released a video targeting Moscow officials with an appeal to tell the truth about a system it said is riddled with lying sycophants.
CIA Director William Burns said in July that disaffection among some Russians over the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies, and that the CIA was not letting it pass.
The agency released the video in Russian entitled “Why I made contact with the CIA – for myself” on social media which shows what is clearly supposed to be a Russian official walking through the snow of what looks like a Russian city.
“I insisted to everyone that it was unscrupulous to distort the truth in reports but those who rose through the ranks were those who did that very thing,” the voice over says in Russian.
“Before I believed that the truth had some value,” the video shows as the actor playing a Russian official enters a Russian government building and shows his pass above the double-headed eagle of Russia.
“Those around you may not want to hear the truth. But we do,” the video says before detailing ways to contact the CIA, which is based in Langley, Virginia. “Integrity has rewards.”
After major failures over the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. war in Iraq, U.S. and British spy agencies claimed an intelligence victory over the Russian invasion of Ukraine by warning of the Kremlin’s plans way in advance.
Moscow is so difficult for Western spies to operate in that they developed “Moscow Rules” in Soviet times to guard against complacency. It has been updated for modern Russia.
Russia accuses Britain and the United States of supporting Ukraine in an attempt to cleave Russia apart and grab its natural resources – assertions Washington and London deny.
Putin, a former KGB spy who served in what used to be East Germany, has restored some of the clout of the once-mighty Soviet intelligence agencies though the CIA says the Kremlin chief was poorly informed about the real situation in Ukraine ahead of his decision to invade.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Angus MacSwan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
A study has shed light on how the number of sexual partners British people have changes as they age, and new findings have surprised researchers.
While the frequency of sexual partners among heterosexual people declines steadily from age 40, the study found stark gender disparities within some age groups.
Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with King’s College London and University College London, questioned more than 5,000 people aged 18 and older.
Women consistently reported having one sexual partner until the age of 50, after which there was a sharp decrease in the number of individuals reporting recent partners. This trend continued with age, with 79% of heterosexual women aged 70 and above saying they had no male partners in the last three weeks.
As men got older, they were also increasingly likely to report no recent partners, but the decline was less steep. Among men aged 70 and above who were heterosexual or had sex with women in the last three months, 50% said they hadn’t had a female partner in the most recent three weeks.
It is well established that sexual habits vary hugely throughout people’s lives. “Many, often interrelated, factors influence what people do, with whom, and how often,” said Prof Cath Mercer, a sexual health researcher at University College London.
The study explored the relationship between age and sex partner counts during the mpox outbreak in the UK. Researchers sought to better understand how sexual behaviours change with age, so that mathematical models of sexually transmitted infections can be made more accurate for future epidemics.
“People of all ages and sexualities can have different sex lives. We need to make sure that this is reflected when modelling what can happen in a public health context and when we’re planning healthcare services” said Prof Henry Potts, a health informatics researcher at UCL and co-author.
This research on sexual habits and age helps public health bodies tailor safe sex messages to the right demographics through different media channels that best reach these subgroups.
Mathematical models of disease transmission shouldn’t assume that having multiple partners just stops happening at a strict age threshold or that young people are necessarily most at risk. “Public health campaigns need to be evidence- rather than assumption-based to ensure that those who most need sexual health care can – and do – receive this,” added Mercer.